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The Cresset, a journal of commentary on literature, the arts, and public affairs, explores ideas and trends in contemporary culture from a perspective grounded in the Lutheran tradition of scholarship, freedom, and faith while informed by the wisdom of the broader Christian community.

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George Eliot’s
novella Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe, first published in 1861,
tells of a man with a checkered past, run out of his hometown after being
betrayed by his best friend and falsely accused of thievery. Marner settles in
a new village where he sets up a successful lacemaking trade and for twenty
years lives alone, isolated and rich. One day, the degenerate son of the local
Lord slips into Marner’s cottage, steals his gold, and disappears. Coincidentally,
a small girl with golden curls is abandoned on Marner’s doorstep, and the
similarity between the money and the girl’s hair is obvious enough that even
the narrator finds it a bit twee. Through the course of the novella, Marner the
wealthy recluse becomes Marner the dutiful father who loses his prized
possessions but gains family and community. We, the readers, are morally
enriched.

For
Eliot and her Victorian readership, the coincidences, moralizing, and blatant
sentimentalism were not flaws but rather genre expectations. To read literature
of this sort was to gain an emotional experience plus ethical enrichment. These
qualities in Silas Marner, as I can attest from many years teaching this
book, are much less congenial to twenty-first century readers. That these
elements of Victorian fiction are reproduced without irony in Derek
Cianfrance’s latest film, The Light Between Oceans, is perhaps its
boldest move—and likely the reason it has received such mixed reviews. Like his
two previous features—Blue Valentine (2010) and The Place Beyond the
Pines (2012)—Cianfrance’s new film strives to be a tearjerker with grand
themes about family, forgiveness, and redemption. Fresh for his latest outing
is a period setting in the first half of the twentieth century and an
Australian locale.

With
his three recent features, Cianfrance has shown himself to be deeply interested
in filmmaking driven by storytelling. To fully summarize any of these works
would be to damage the experience somewhat for the uninitiated viewer, since
part of the viewing pleasure arises from wondering whether anything good might
evolve from the characters’ circumstances or whether the narrative will plunge
headlong into unrelenting tragedy. Few directors working today seem as
committed as Cianfrance to unfurling storylines that cross decades and
generations. This narrative style can be enchanting and surprising, but it also
has made his films difficult to market to audiences accustomed to being sold
quickly encapsulated premises and scenarios. The famous, and much parodied,
movie trailer tagline, “In a world, where…,” that accommodates innumerable
action/sci-fi/rom-com stories is evidence of this quick-sell based on setting
and scenario.

Reduced
to its premise, The Light Between Oceans begins in a world where a
generation of traumatized ex-soldiers are returning from France after the Great
War. Tom Sherbourne (Michael Fassbender), a former officer suffering from PTSD,
takes a position as a lighthouse keeper on an island off the Australian coast.
The enforced solitude suits his postwar state of mind, but he strikes up an
epistolary romance with a vibrant young woman called Isabel Graysmark (Alicia
Vikander), who draws him out of his emotional numbness and into passionate
marriage. All is well for a time, and the early lighthouse days are full of
meaningful looks between the photogenic leads and sun-drenched kisses haloed in
lens flares. But a series of miscarriages sends Isabel into a traumatic state
of her own, as her lost children join the dead combatants who haunt Tom and
launch her into a hyper-state of self-protection. The first in a series of wild
coincidences occurs when a dinghy washes ashore carrying a dead man and a
crying baby—one of the film’s clearest echoes of George Eliot. Instead of Silas
Marner’s selfless turn toward fatherhood, the Sherbournes become ethical
wrecks. Tom immediately feels compelled by duty to alert proper authorities,
but Isabel insists that they keep the baby, bury the man’s body, and remove the
grave marker for their second child to pass off the foundling as their own.
Tom’s love for Isabel overcomes his conscience, and the relatively staid first
half of the film shifts gears drastically with an influx of new characters,
moral dilemmas, and even a tense subplot involving a police procedural and a
courtroom drama.

This
plot structure feels like an avalanche gathering momentum, and many critics
have ridiculed the contrivances and implausibilities that enable the storyline.
These narrative twists do indeed strain credulity when measured against
twenty-first century expectations about “realism,” but The Light Between
Oceans may be better understood as a throwback to Victorian storytelling,
where, for instance, the chance meeting of vital characters separated by miles
and years does not undermine the narrative pleasures and moralistic themes in a
Dickens novel. That Tom and Isabel become closely entangled with Hannah
Roennfeldt (Rachel Weisz) for the last half of the film requires some
suspension of disbelief but is a crucial part of the ethical quagmire
Cianfrance creates. With every twist in the plot, heartbreaking tragedy
threatens to devour, and with each contrived escape Cianfrance ratchets up the
pathos. Marketing for the film has alluded to this late development, but mostly
The Light Between Oceans has been billed for its high romanticism,
augmented by the fact that Fassbender and Vikander became a real-life couple
during the shoot. Though possibly unsatisfying as a romantic star vehicle, The
Light Between Oceans may very well have a second life in college ethics
courses or church small groups where discussion of the characters’ choices
seems ready-made by the blatant themes of loss, grace, sacrifice, and
atonement.

Cianfrance’s
previous film The Place Beyond the Pines was also notable for its
surprisingly expansive plotting, including a narrative twist so shocking that
critics vowed secrecy and many audiences felt betrayed. Beneath its
profanity-laden script and gritty characters, such as a facially tattooed Ryan Gosling,
The Place Beyond the Pines was also a Victorian-style morality tale,
covering multiple generations to explore the “sins of the fathers” motif.
Rachel Weisz in The Light Between Oceans functions much like Bradley
Cooper in The Place Beyond the Pines, a big name in the credits who only
becomes important late in the film. Likewise, Cianfrance’s first major feature,
Blue Valentine, though far more sexually graphic and emotionally cruel
than The Light Between Oceans, is at heart a moralizing story about the
challenges of marriage. Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines
feature Ryan Gosling at his most doe-eyed and self-lacerating, and Michael
Fassbender steps into this same type but with slightly more ethical backbone.

At
the risk of giving too much away, it is worth noting that for all of his
dwelling in dark human tragedies, Cianfrance remains a strikingly optimistic
filmmaker. Some of his optimism, evident in the ways that certain characters
manage to snatch victory from defeat, compounds the sense of “unrealism” and
Victorian quaintness. Cianfrance’s sprawling approach to chronology is a major
factor in this blend of buoyancy and wretchedness. The island setting of The
Light Between Oceans is heavy-handedly called “Janus,” and Tom observes to
Isabel that Janus is the god for whom we named “January, which looks forward to
the new year and backward to the old.” In addition, the lighthouse shines out
between two oceans, emphasizing the split vision of all the characters. This
dual focus on past and future guides much of the film’s narrative. Cianfrance
has a penchant for springing forward through several decades of a character’s
life and revealing the effects of one set of choices upon a later generation.
This generous timespan allows him to demonstrate the power of parental sin and
its turmoil for the young, but it also opens unexpected moments of relief after
lifetimes of suffering. The surprising coda to The Light Between Oceans
gives a glimpse of characters in old age and children grown up, and through
time’s passage we witness the absolution of the parents’ sins.

Silas
Marner concludes with Marner’s adopted daughter grown and married
exclaiming, “O father…I think nobody could be happier than we are.” For George
Eliot, the measure of success in her fiction came not from supposed literary
virtues like consistency, plausibility, and subtlety, but from bettering her
audience through moral teaching, sage wisdom, and ethical modelling. Her happy
conclusion emphasizes the just rewards of righteous actions. That Cianfrance
has attempted something similar in his story of complicated parenting, sins
redeemed, and audience enrichment—even despite imperfect results—is a testament
to artistic bravery.

Charles Andrewsis an associate professor of English at Whitworth
University.